Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 35 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

I visit religious building if they have nice architecture. Even I do not mind to visit cemetery like Pere Lachaise. That is also for art and architecture.
I do not visit catacombs anymore. Out of curiosity I visited a couple of catacombs. I have stopped visiting catacombs a long time ago. I have never visited Aokigahara forest in Japan. I will never do. Life is too short to waste time visiting death and depression.

People say that it is the second most popular place for suicides in the world after San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. About 100 suicides occur every year. People also say that the Aokigahara forest has became the popular place for suicides after the novel Nami no Tō (波の塔?) or “Tower of Waves” written by Seichō Matsumoto was published in 1960. In this novel, lovers commit suicide in the forest. But the Aokigahara forest was used for suicides long before the novel was published. Ubasute was practiced by poor Japanese. They used to leave their elderly relatives to the Aokigahara forest to die. During the drought and famine, ubasute was widely practiced. Remember The Ballad of Narayama! According to tradition, once a person reaches the age of 70, he or she must travel to a remote mountain to die of starvation. The Ballad of Narayama reminds me of Bengali Hindu widows! Family members send them to Varanasi, a holy place to die.

Suicide in the Aokigahara forest reminds me of farmers’ suicide in India. Indian farmers started committing mass suicide in 1990’s. More than 17,500 farmers killed themselves every year from 2002 to 2006. 16,196 farmers committed suicide in 2008. Since 1997, much more than 200,000 farmers committed suicide. The reasons of farmers’ suicide: ‘debt, the difficulty of farming semi-arid regions, poor agricultural income, absence of alternative income opportunities, the downturn in the urban economy forcing non-farmers into farming, and the absence of suitable counseling services.’